Navigating the EV Revolution: Insights from Industry Expert Buzz Smith

Welcome to another In Wheel Time podcast, a 30 minute mini version of the In Wheel Time car show that airs live every Saturday morning 8 to 11am central. It is the In Wheel Time car talk show. What Coming up? Buzz Smith on EVs and hot weather Conrad has this week in Auto History and we'll get you caught up on the stories making car news this week Today, along with Mike out of this world, mars, back from his COVID vacation. King Conrad DeLong we always need more, jeff Zeke and I'm, don Armstrong, so glad that you joined us on this hot hot hot hot weekend and it just keeps on coming, although, although there is some hope and change on the horizon, open change Because we have a cold, well, a front coming through A cold, God knows.

Let's define the 90's.

Listen, if it goes down one degree, it's a cold front. That's right, all right, that's coming on Monday.

Hey, you know what time it is Howdy-doodie time. It's time to catch a buzz.

It is time to catch a buzz, so why don't we do that right now? Here he is, ladies and gentlemen, the EV or evangelist Buzz Smith, buzz, good morning. Good morning Don.

Hey guys, how's it going? Well, very well.

He's teasing us with the wet flag behind him. So what is the wet flag? You're going to get the rain before we do, I think.

No, that's not rain.

That's wet. Those are tears of an EV owner. That's, that's that.

Oh here we go, here we go. No, no, it's early, it's early.

That's not why we got in touch with you, because we wanted to talk about. It's a heat wave. What does the heat do to your EV?

Well, it doubles the range that you get normally.

Yeah, yeah, minus Nice try In the in the minus category. I think is what you're going to say.

A warmer battery is a more efficient battery. So yeah, it does increase range. Cold, cold temperature decreases ranges on an EV.

So what does? What does the heat do to your EV Besides? I mean, it's got fans in it, it's got coolant in it, it's got things in it that try to keep the heat down. Do you have it? Does it have a temperature gauge in it?

Well, yeah, let's have a little perspective, though. When you run the air conditioning in your big SUV, guess what it impacts your mileage. Now it does impact EVs more, and my car right now, which I got in early 2016. So the batteries about? Let's see, I got to do some math, real quick Seven years. Seven and a half years old, I'm experiencing about a 30% drop from the EPA stated range. So the 30% part of that is probably age of the battery. I may have lost around 5% of total capacity of the battery over time, but I charge mine in the heat outdoors all the time, so that's part of my issue. But hot temperature.

Wait a minute. Well, we stop right there. Well, why is that the issue or part of the issue?

Well, I should wait until later at night to charge the battery when it's cooler, because charging the battery creates heat. And so it's a good idea to charge when it's colder. I'm lazy. I have solar panels on my roof, so the electricity is free when the sun is up, so my rule of thumb is if it's in my driveway, it's plugged in Gotcha, so my car is usually finished charging during the hottest parts of the day, so I'm probably much rougher on my battery than the average person.

So you had said just a few seconds ago that you've lost 5% of the performance of your battery over time just because of age and I know on my iPhone that's something I can go in and look at is the battery's performance? Is there a way in, say, the ALDL connector in the computer built into the car to look at the battery performance level, not the charge level but its ability to perform? Is that a measurable scale? That's built into the system you can see.

It depends on the brand of the vehicle. The Nissan Leaf was really good about that, the first generation. I'm not sure about the new one, but it would actually actually I am sure about the new one because a friend of mine experienced this. It actually would not show it charging all the way back up. Again. There would be missing bars of charge when the car would come back and say it was fully charged. So you could actually see that. Now. To see it, say, in a Chevrolet vehicle, you'd have to have diagnostic to run on your battery at the dealership. I don't know of any way to see it in my car, other than what I'm seeing is that my range has decreased when the vehicle's fully charged. Now part of that is my foot is on the bottom of the floorboard all the time. I love EV acceleration, so I'm much harder on range than the average EV driver who's really focused on hypermiling. I don't care about hypermiling, I care about acceleration.

Well plus, you know, in Texas you have 105 degrees outside. Your air conditioning is also creating a drain because the system's running the compressor all the time.

Yep, and up here it was 108 yesterday, so they say it's a dry heat, but that's a load of crap. It's an oven to dry heat too.

You know, yeah. Well, so what? Morris sends me some stuff that you know you might wanna talk about it, and I'm thinking, well, he wants to talk about it. Here's your pedestal, sir. Go for it.

Okay, well, you know hot temperatures are hard on electric vehicle batteries and that can actually shorten their driving range permanently if you don't take some precautions. What are the precautions? Here we go. Evs have systems to prevent this and you can help your EV. Some of these systems are the same as they are on traditional internal combustion engines or ICE vehicles, like water pumps, radiators and fans, and Don you touched on that just a minute ago. It is surprising for most new EV drivers to hear their vehicle make sounds even when it's turned off, and that's the EV protecting its battery. It does this 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and it's monitoring the battery and the ambient temperature around it. So, whether the car's turned on or off, if it gets too hot it may turn on fans and or a water pump to cool the battery. It may even, in the case of my car, turn on the air conditioner, because the air conditioner can cool down the battery as well. If it gets too cold in the winter, it may warm the battery using an electric heater. Now, unlike a traditional ICE vehicle, the engine or motor does not need to be running to run the water pump fan and heater, as they're not mechanically attached to the non-existent crankshaft because they're electric and they don't need the engine to be running to heat up the water. They use a heater. So that's where you can help. If you have the ability to plug in your EV at home, plug it in, like I do, anytime it's parked. Electric fans and water pumps use electricity. The EV uses electricity to move down the road. But if your EV is plugged in, where's it gonna get that electricity? Well, it's gonna get it from the battery pack In other words. You'll lose some driving range if it needs to run the heater or the air conditioner when it's just sitting on the driveway.

Now Buzz. So Apple says if you leave your iPhone plugged in all the time on the battery, you know charging all the time that you can actually decrease the life of your battery. So are you saying that, since the system cooling, heating, whatever is actually, I guess cycling power in and out of the battery Would?

that be preventative maintenance.

Yeah, I guess maybe.

Now the cars actually make sure that the amperage or voltage coming into the car is within an acceptable range. So the charger on the wall and the car talk to each other. That's why an EV driver on the road doesn't have to worry if the charger is a 350 kilowatt charger or just a 50 kilowatt charger. Once these two devices talk to each other, the charger will reduce, if necessary, the rate of charge to protect the battery.

So it's kind of like the video that's out now. The car goes. Hey, what's your name?

No, sorry, Well, actually that's an interesting comment, because when you plug your Tesla in, tesla is able to tell who you are to charge your account for the chart.

So I think that Kind of like having an IP type address or something on that car. They know that car.

Exactly so. In the future, we're not gonna have to use a credit card or even our smartphones to pay for an electric charge when we're on the road, which makes it much more secure. You know there's scammers out there that put card readers on gas pumps and they get your card information. If you're using a debit card and you plug in your PIN, they've got your card number and your PIN. So it's actually more insecure to buy gasoline than it is today to buy electricity for your car.

So if I borrow your Tesla and decide I wanna go to California in it, I can send all the bills to you.

Well, Tesla would send all the bills to me and I'd come hunting for you.

So another thing you mentioned a few minutes ago was the life cycle of the battery has decreased Now that EVs have been out for a period of time. Is there a determined life cycle by brand? You mentioned the Nissan LEAF. I think you drive a Chevy Bolt, is that correct?

Bolt Victor rather than.

Bolt, so yours is the hybrid.

Yes, mine's a plug-in electric hybrid. I am actually. There's a whole bunch of new EVs coming out. My next one will be 100% EV, but I'm specifically looking at two vehicles that haven't come to the US yet or gone into production yet. One of those is the Canoe Lifestyle Vehicle. The other one is the Volkswagen ID Bus. I'm absolutely in love with that car. It's reminiscent of the old hippie van from the 60s that Volkswagen put out, and it will be available in the United States next year in a three-row version. I don't care about the back seats at all. I want to go and do camping with my wife, so we are going to basically gut the back of the car and turn it into a camper. And just today I saw this really cool kit that you can put into the car and it gives you a raised bed platform and then these slide-out drawers to put all your camping equipment underneath that. You're under where? Yeah. And if I arrive at the camping site and it's pouring down rain or it's too cold or too hot guess what I just camp in the car overnight, let the air conditioner run all night long because, like my Volt, in the hottest days if I'm blasting the AC it's only using one half to one kilowatt per hour kilowatt hour. So even with the little battery that's in a Volt I can run that thing almost 36 hours before I would run out of electricity. In the new cars that have 66 kilowatt hour battery packs are larger. You could run for four or five days the air conditioner at full blast and not have a problem.

Now Buzz. You talked about the Volkswagen looking bus I've seen that also on the Internet and, of course, the canoe. They're both Japanese vehicles, but the canoe is that being built in California.

The canoe is actually going to be manufactured at a new factory they built in Oklahoma.

City.

Oklahoma. I've seen videos recently of the robotics lines. They also have a smaller assembly plant in Arkansas which is oddly right in the same hometown as Walmart, and Walmart has contracted to buy up to 10,000 of the vehicles, so it's kind of a coincidence that they're there, I guess.

So, in other words, in the near future, I can say do you canoe?

And you can say canoe canoe canoe, exactly, and you can use a canoe cologne. Well, that's what I've got. That's the reference to that, but you get a thing Exactly.

And now there are people that are going to go what, what Cano?

So that's where you need a three row in the. In the Volkswagen is one for Buzz and his wife, and then a row for Cheech and another row for Chong Chong.

That's it. And the big bamboo, and the big bamboo. So I'm going to change directions here. Let's talk about charging stations. You know, I've been reading here the past few weeks or less since last time that we talked to you. I think everybody in his mother is now out there building charging stations across the United States with our money, and I worry about that because you know that some of them are going to make it and some of them aren't. And what are you going to do in that case?

Okay, well, let me stop you right there for a second. Yes, remember and there's a great book on this, I think it's called Flattening the World Remember when the internet was the hot thing to invest in? Yep, so companies came online. They installed literally tens of thousands of miles of fiber optic cable, because we weren't going to make it with dial-up modems. The internet would not be what it is today without all of that infrastructure being built, right? Yep? So the internet went belly up and the companies that survived turned around and bought their assets at pennies on the dollar. You and I, because we're ancient remember long-distance phone calls. I remember, even in my professional career, being in Germany and calling home and I was only there a week and I had $400 in phone bill when I got back because of long-distance costs. Now I can get tech support from companies and their tech support is located in India or wherever, and the call is dirt cheap. So, yes, they're using our money to build infrastructure that will build a whole new industry for this country, to all of our benefit, like the internet is today, and some detriment on the internet side. But we're building an entire new economy right now and already we're seeing factories being built, we're seeing jobs flow into this country and the interesting thing is, just this morning I saw an article where Tesla is saying their charging network is going to be generating I can't remember the exact number, but it's well over $1 billion a year in revenue. So we are building an entire new economy for this country right now and, yeah, we're all chipping in for it because we're all going to benefit.

Like beta recorders and VHS recorders. Everybody wound up going to VHS and now all of these manufacturers are going to the Tesla plug.

I read this week somewhere If you've looked at the different plugs, the CCS plug is incredibly large and heavy, and it's what happens when you have a committee design something Exactly. Tesla was a much more elegant solution and it just is. In this case, the right brand is going to win. I was the Sony Betamax guy. Beta was technically a superior product yes, a little more expensive, so we lost Tesla in this case. The cars are more expensive, but Tesla won on the charging side.

I read this week somewhere that the EV craze there's going to be up to the first one millionth vehicle. Electric vehicle will be sold pretty soon. And then on the next article, yeah, that's in the United States, that's not worldwide, right? Right in the United States, right. But the next page on that was that Ford just lost hundreds of millions of dollars in their EV program. So there was like a back and forth.

Look at how they lost that money. They're losing that money by building battery plants and building assembly factories. When you amortize that cost over one or two years of production, oh my God, we're losing so much money. But in the fact you know, if you don't build that stuff, you don't have the opportunity to make money in the future. So we really need to do a much deeper dive than the headlines give us.

It's almost like R and D, it just in a little bit different form, because they've got to have the factory to create the product to sell.

Yeah, and when that F-150 comes out? There's an article I think it was on electric just recently they're coming out with a black matte finished Ford F-150 Lightning. That is just badass looking.

There was a guy that drove his F-150 Lightning and abandoned it on the road somewhere because he couldn't find a charger and he bought another car. I think they bought an ice engine or something.

Yeah, yeah, I saw that, but that I would have to do some more reading about that. I'm going to cross Canada tour.

What is that? One in a million.

Yeah, exactly that's such a big deal out of it.

Well, and they, because and this is what everybody needs to get and they did the same thing when there were Tesla car fires. Statistically speaking, gasoline fires catch fire, or gasoline cars catch fire much more often than electric vehicles do. But If you want to track traffic to your magazine, your newspaper or your website, story about a gasoline car on fire is no big deal because it's much more common. I personally have seen multiple gasoline car fires in my life, one of them while it was just sitting in the middle of the night and my neighbor's front driveway. But if I Tesla catches fire, holy cow, that's front page news.

You know, and that's right. I got a calendar.

That's it. You got to have the headlines.

Yeah, so what do you see in the near future in the electric world thereby? What do you see in the electric world here in the in the near future?

In the near future, the big news is going to be the infrastructure rollout Texas will. In the very near future You'll be able to drive from El Paso to Texarkana, from Brownsville to Texline, electrically. There will be places like around Big Bend that'll be a little more difficult for a while. There's a lot of height around what's called Vita X. So vehicle to grid, vehicle to house and even vehicle to vehicle believe it or not Kia and Hyundai vehicles if they have a friend that runs out of electricity, they can pull up in their vehicle, plug the cars into each other and charge that stranded car.

So I think they jumpstarted Pardon me jumpstart it like it would jumpstart a nice engine.

But it, yeah, but it's much more energy being transfer. I understand, but yeah, now the hype around that, I think, is a little overhyped and there are some people are going to be disappointed. So if I want vehicle to Grid, I have to buy a four thousand or even vehicle to home, a four thousand dollar Charger instead of something that normally is five hundred bucks, because it includes the gateway that Disconnects my house from the grid. So I you know when the grid's down I don't electrocute somebody out there trying to get the grid going again, right, oh and, and if I sell my in Texas, I can sell my surplus electricity from my solar panels back to the grid, but I only get three or four cents per kilowatt hour. Right now in California and Texas there are virtual power plant Tests being run in a virtual power plant and right now they're only using homes that have Tesla power walls. But you have your electricity being stored, say, during night. You might have free nights and weekends, so when it's free, you fill up your Tesla power walls and then, when the grid is under stress, when there's a crisis, the price per kilowatt hour can go from where it retails in Texas at twelve point two cents, all the way up to nine dollars a kilowatt hour. Well, I can sell my energy back to the grid. Now they limit me to five dollars a kilowatt hour, but if I can bring it in at free or twelve point two cents and then, when the grid's under, strange sell it for five dollars, that's a huge payback on my Tesla power wall and in the future, once the OEMs get on board our cars will be able to do the same thing. So we'll be able to participate, sort of like, in an energy stock market To buy low and sell high, and at the same time we're helping everyone else by keeping the grid going.

Thanks, Eric Hot he has the e v Angelist, the Evangelist, that's him. That's mr Buzz Smith. And buzz, it's great talking to you and thanks so much. I'm thinking Professor of electrical cars right here, ladies and gentlemen, buzz, it's great to talk to you, my friend, you take care.

I've seen you guys. Yeah, I love a good man.

Thank you too. All right, thanks the year on the in-wheel time car talk show. Like to thank you for writing with us today and we'd love to hear from you. Shoot us an email. The addresses info at in wheel time calm, okay, conrad's got this week in auto history in 1897 my buddy Ransom Eli Oles of Lansing Michigan founds the Oles motor works. He and I had coffee just too early on.

Which later became Oles, will build a vision until 2002 and General Motors cancelled Oles mobile. And do you know, mary Baram makes money?

No, I don't. Let's not get off the subject here okay.

In 1905, newell Wright, an attorney, filed to register the Cadillac crest as a trademark. So Cadillac has had the rights to that crest since 1905. The Insigna has adorned Cadillac's luxury car for almost a century and it's gone through some derivatives and stuff, some changes and stuff. The ducks are gone. Darn it, I like the ducks. In 1909, in front of some 12,000 spectators, automotive engineer Louis Schweitzer wins the two lap, five mile inaugural race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. So they went twice around and all these people came to watch. Okay, all right, got their money's worth. In 1937, harvard University in Cambridge, massachusetts, became the first school to institute graduate study courses in traffic engineering and administration. So it's all their fault. Yeah, yeah, everybody talks about what a great school Harvard is. Think about that next time you're stuck in a 610 traffic in front of the Galleria In 1950-.

He's a bitter man.

In 1958, the production of the elegant Packard Lime came to a halt. Studebaker Packard attributed the decision to lagging luxury car sales, but many Packard fans were disgruntled by the decision which came shortly after Packard was merged with Studebaker, and the Packard assembly plant in Detroit is still there.

The structure's still there.

yeah, but it's just in the horrible state they actually use that for movies. As part of a year-long celebration of its 100th anniversary, a redesigned version of the Michelin man Bibindium, the corporate symbol of the world's largest tire manufacturer, makes an appearance at the Monterey Historic Automobile races in Monterey, california. They definitely he lost a lot of weight and kind of changed his shape and become less looking like me and more svelte like our Don Armstrong. Here you like that svelte?

I like it. What's about all I like?

Can't spell it. And then in 2004, 83 tow trucks rolled through the streets of Wenechee, washington, in an event arranged by the Washington Tow Truck Association, and the Guinness Book of World Records dubbed it the world's largest parade of tow trucks. And they will be at the British car coming up when everybody shows up with their British cars. A couple of stories, I wanted to bring to you.

Uaw members at the Detroit three agreed to let the union call a strike If contract talks break down, with the September 14th deadline looming. So that would mean that we are three weeks away. It's gonna happen. About 97% of workers who voted cast their ballot in favor of authorizing a strike. The UAW said Friday. The vote is a routine part of contract negotiation and does not necessarily mean a strike will occur. Oh yeah, of course it does. Nissan North America recalling 236,000 centrist sedans in the US because the tire rods can bend and break what Potentially causing a loss of steering control. The recall covers Centra compact cars from the 2020 to 2022 model years. It expands the June 21 recall that affected nearly 139 Centras. The left and right tie rods on those vehicles might bend or deform under certain operating conditions, such as a curb impact, according to the recall report submitted last week to NHTSA. So if you drive one of those cars, you might want to call your Nissan dealer. And Nation's top auto safety agency proposed a rule Monday that would require automakers to equip vehicles with seat belt warning systems for front and rear passenger seats, in an effort to establish consistency and improve seat belt use. Nhtsa's proposed rule would amend the federal regulation for occupant crash protection, known as Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard. Number 208, sounds like Barney 5, which mandates visual and audible alerts to encourage seat belt use for the driver's seat but does not require a warning for other seating positions. All right time now for a quick break and we will be right back with our next guest, coming up in just a couple of minutes here on the InWheelTime radio program. So stay with us, we'll be right back. 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Our live broadcast airs every Saturday 8-11 central on InwheelTimecom, the iHeart app and on YouTube. Be sure to say hello when we're broadcasting from the tailpipe syntakos cruise in Auto Ram and the Houston Auto Show, among others. Now it's easier than ever to hear about all things automotive all week long. You're invited to join fellow car enthusiasts in becoming part of the ever-growing Inwheel Time car talk family. Don't forget those 30-minute podcast episodes on your favorite podcast channel. That's it for this podcast episode of the Inwheel Time car show. I'm Don Armstrong, inviting you to join us for our live show every Saturday morning 8-11am. Central on Facebook, youtube, twitch and our InwheelTimecom website. This is available on Apple Podcast, spotify, stitcher, iheart Podcast, podcast Addict Tune In Pandora and Amazon Music.